With great speed comes great capacity in Panasonic's new SDHC offering

A few days ago, SanDisk announced a 32GB SDHC flash media
which boasted not only the highest capacity on the market, but also the fastest
speeds -- the Ultra II 32GB SDHC memory card will have a maximum read rate of
15 MB/sec and a write rate of 10 MB/sec.

Today, SanDisk does not have the fastest 32GB SDHC card on the block as
Panasonic has announced its own 32GB
SDHC flash media within the Class 6 speed bracket. There are 3 classes of
speed associated with SDHC cards. Class 2 specifications list transfer rates of
at least 2 MB/sec or higher, Class 4 specifies a speed of 4 MB/sec and up, and
a Class 6 memory card would have speeds of over 6 MB/sec.

Though SanDisk's recently announced product falls under the Class 6
specifications, Panasonic's RP-SDV32GU1K 32GB SDHC card boasts maximum data
transfer rates of up to 20 MB/sec under optimal conditions. It also states,
since this 32GB card is manufactured using industrial-grade memory, the
RP-SDV32GU1K can withstand a wider range of temperatures; -13 F to 185 F as
opposed to 32 F to 158F of typical consumer-grade SDHC media.

Panasonic's RP-SDV32GU1K will be available in April, according to the press
release, and will be aimed at shooters of high-definition video and
professional photography. Pricing has been set at a whopping $700, twice the
amount of SanDisk's
32GB offering.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Whoever buys that is going to kick themselves when they see it priced under $50 in a year or two. Rule of thumb for storage, especially flash: NEVER buy the highest capacity products unless you are shameless.

This technology is aimed toward users of Panasonic's P2(solid state) based professional video cameras and their new P2 based field recorder.

When a standard DVCPro HD, HDCam, or HDCam SR tape costs between $60-$170 and really isn't reusable it makes sense to pay $700 for the card(s). Tape decks to play these formats can also be $100K or more. The P2 deck is $15K.

With solid-state video capture it's simpler and cheaper. Record to solid state (initially more expensive), dump to hard drive (drastically less expensive), archive to LTO tape (less expensive than using camera original tapes for archiving).

But the pro business is not the amateur "business". Pro's take the cost of purchasing tools, which this is, off their taxes, to an extent, making it less expensive than it appears.

Also, a client gets billed for a certain percentage of doing business. That includes the purchase of the tools. The card is amortized. It's much less expensive than film, processing, messengers, or FedEx.

I was spending this amount on multiple cards (per card) a few years back, and so was every other person who needed the capacity, and who could figure the cost into pricing schedules.

The only problem with this card is that 20MB/s is too slow for the latest cameras, and most pro cameras need compact flash, not this. I use 4 Gb and 8 GB SanDisk Extreme IV cards, and the Firewire 800 reader, as do most others I know.

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